I’d like to summarize some of the thoughts regarding the topic of e-war and combat utility drones:
-First, it is generally recognized that the e-war drones are under-powered, to the point where they are mostly useless. Weak in power, durability and speed.
-Second, it should be recognized that these drones are not expected to be a replacement for a fitted module on a ship, but as a drone they should be able to provide flexible solutions and options to an encounter.
-Third, drone bay space is valuable, so ideally drones that provide a flexible option will not use up that much of it.
-Fourth, many E-War types have stacking penalties, which makes it more valuable to have effects provided from a single strong source, rather than many weak ones.
After going over these points I came up with a new possibility:
A drone with dynamic strength depending upon the bandwidth available to it.
Imagine there only being a single 10m^3 drone type available for each e-war type. This drone will apply an effect at a dynamically defined strength to it’s target based upon how much bandwidth that the ship controlling it can assign to it. When It is deployed it will use anywhere between 5 to 50 mbit/s of bandwidth, depending on how much the ship has available to provide to it.
50 mbit/s would essentially equal a meta 1 module, 25 mbit/s 2/3 of a module, 10mbit/s 1/2 a modulle, and 5 mbit/s 1/3 of a module. (actual values may vary, as my example may be a little strong). It could also be made so that a ship can only field one or two of these drones at a time, and not mix different e-war types together
I think this may be a strong option to make these drones viable and see use throughout the game.
Added to the above, having additional behavioral options to drone flights could significantly increase their survivability. Currently all non-sentry drones will orbit their targets relatively closely. If we could have the options to orbit close, orbit far, or stay close to the host ship while still engaging, then drones could make use of their targeting ranges more effectively.
light, med and heavy at 25m3,50m3 and 125m3 none of this bandwidth allocation crap and then make them just 5x stronger then now(except ECs they just get a little boost).
Fixes some of the OP issues with ECs and solves the issue with the rest of them
No, drone boat’s don’t need even more ability to completely overcome every single situation possible.
They are already partially imune to e-war (becuase they are 5 separate target’s), they have select-able damage + huge damage at massive range’s, if they could do 4 dps + 1 ewar drone to counter the ship they are facing it would be extremely strong.
If CCP made drone squadron’s like they did for cap’s, they yea an e-war squadron would be fine to have quite strong, its when you have 125 drone bandwidth and using 4 med drone’s 40 bandwidth + 50-e-war that thing’s would become broken.
At the same time any other ship would be giving up its ability to counter small tackle, while drone boat’s would not have a problem with that as they have much more available drone bay.
First, if you can only field one of these at a time, or even two, then it becomes a prime target, and since it is a non-combat med drone, it will likely be slightly more vulnerable than a typical Med scout drone. It will be fairly easy to counter.
And yes, these drones would be a good tool for drone boats but I can’t see it being overpowered as they would have unbonused application, and you would rarely ever fill your hold with them.
I see these being more useful for the utility that they provide for ships that do not have bonuses for drones. Many of these ships have hold space that matches their bandwidth capacity and these ships usually only use light drones to ensure that they have spares and for the counter to tackle that they provide leading to them to often waste their potential bandwidth capacity.
Reducing the number to one drone means these become easier to fight. At the same time do five drones already allow to manage bandwidth by merely changing their composition.
It’s an interesting idea, but it adds little new, but only destroys some of the existing aspects of drones, such as distracting a target by attacking it with multiple drones, which each first must be locked onto and may even force a player to remove some existing target locks.
Also ECM drones are fine, and increasing the strength of other e-war drones will only take away damage from fights and put more emphasis on e-war in general. We then already have specialized e-war ships, and drone boats would start to rival these, which brings further imbalance.
Yes, this would put ECM drones on a more level playing field with other e-war drones because one source of application means zero diminishing returns for the others, and no stacked chance for ECM. These ECM drones may still be favorable when combined with modules or other ships that also run ECM in comparison to other ewar types, but the fact that all the other types would no longer apply negligible effects, and could be used in a flexible manner, could be very worthwhile.
I’m not sure if I made it clear to all that these drones can and would be usable at the same time as combat drones. If 40mbit of drone bandwidth is available on the ship and 4 light scout are out, along with 1 of these, 20mbit of bandwidth would be assigned to the E-war drone.
oh yeah because i see absolutely no way that could end badly. you think EC clouds are bad? just wait until you have 700 web and 800 paint drones on you
And you’re fine when 700-800 pilots or their drones are on you in any other situation? Dream on. Pretty much any Ewar is most significant in small gang pvp anyway
